


the darkest corners of my mind are yours

by girlsarewolves



Series: we are the dust of the earth [5]
Category: The Vampire Diaries - L. J. Smith
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark fic, Dubious Consent, F/M, Implied Character Death, Mental Abuse, Mental Instability, Not Canon Compliant, Physical Abuse, Power Imbalance, Vampire Cannibalism, completely ignores all that angel stuff from later books, completely ignores most of the recent books period, except for Klaus bringing Katherine back, it's more about these two and their destructive co-dependent ways, there's barely any plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 13:55:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/610544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It all starts with blood; she started with blood before. He'll restart her with blood again.  AU; there is no Destiny Rising.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from 'S.O.S. (Anything But Love)' by Apocalyptica featuring Cristina Scabbia (which, like the rights to Vampire Diaries, I do not own).

* * *

She remembers burning; the feeling of her skin simultaneously melting and drying up into cinders and ash. She remembers - Elena (their precious Elena) took her ring, took her life.  
  
 _I only wanted what was rightfully mine_ ; but Elena had taken everything.  
  
She remembers the searing heat; she was a blazing inferno and then she was dust and nothingness.  
  
 _But I'm not burning..._  
  
Blood. That is what she tastes. Not ash, not a mouthful of smoke, of her own body on fire. Sweet, cool blood trickling down her throat.  
  
Arms. That is what she feels. Not the cruel, blistering sun and the purifying flames. Strong arms holding her, cradling her - keeping her in place.  
  
 _Klaus_. That is what she sees when her eyes open and the blinding brightness becomes the pale light of the moon. Klaus - holding her, feeding her.  
  
 _No no no, I killed you. I watched you die. I killed you! I watched you die! I giggled when you looked at me - so surprised! I danced around your body, and I_ laughed _!_  
  
He says not a word; merely keeps his open, bleeding wrist pressed to her lips and kisses her temple. Like a patient, indulgent parent with a beloved child.  
  
(But that is not how it was; that is not what they are.)  
  
 _I am dead - I am ash and dust in the wind, gone, taken, stolen, Elena stole all the parts of me you left - you cannot drive me mad here! I am dead!_  
  
"Dear Katherine," whispers a voice that makes her shake - that voice promised her eternity, centuries ago. He releases his hold on her, and she falls. Klaus' blood falls onto her face in droplets from the thin, red gash across his wrist. The wound closes even as she hits cool, damp earth. Her maker, her savior - _her tormentor -_ looks down at her with a smile. "Yes, I have missed you."  
  
Katherine remembers dying; feels the pain of it throughout her body as Klaus' blood melds and molds her back together.  
  
 _I am alive._ She wants to shun this truth, tuck herself away inside her mind and deny it - but he will find her, he always finds her. No matter where she goes and how carefully she hides (even inside of her own head, even when she's gone and dead).  
  
 _I am damned._  
  
"Nothing to say, little one?" His arm moves towards her - like a snake striking - and his fingers coil around her throat. He lifts her up with a painfully tight grip, cutting off her air supply.  
  
He has always loved reminding her that she does not need to breathe.  
  
"Show some gratitude, Katherine. After all I have done for you, all I let you get away with." His voice keeps rising, rising. A whisper becomes a snarl becomes a shout. Electric blue eyes stare into her, searching her.  
  
Katherine wants to scream (but his hand is denying her the right), wants to shut her eyes, wants to curl up and go back to the oblivion that came after the sun and before his blood.  
  
 _"After all the trouble I went through to avenge you and bring you back."_  
  
He's in her head; she feels him invading, permeating her mind, her insides. He lives under her skin again; he always did, even when he was dead.  
  
 _He was never dead._  
  
The struggle in her dissipates quickly as realization sinks in, until Katherine is left hanging limply from his hand around her neck.  
  
 _He was never dead._  
  
"Why?"  
  
Klaus is silent when he drops her a second time. There's a harder glint to his eyes now though (perhaps the wonder of her resurrection is fading from the ancient, jaded husk left in his chest). "Time to go, pretty thing," he tells her. His voice is casual conversation and complete dismissal of her question. "It's quite cold tonight; that's not good for your health."  
  
She takes note of the damp chill in the air, of the soft breeze and the full moon; she recognizes these woods, the blood drenched ground she's kneeling on.  
  
 _Fell's Church. Damon. Stefan._  
  
"Where are-"  
  
"I would not speak their names if I were you." He says this aloud, his lips moving, but she hears the words echo inside her skull, over and over, until she clutches her ears though it won't do a thing. "Now come along. You must be famished."  
  
 _How?_ \- she doesn't ask - _Why?_ \- though she desperately wants to. Katherine rises to her feet and follows after her maker, remembering the sight of his wide, surprised eyes when she drove the stake through his heart - the one she was promised would kill him.  
  
 _I danced around your body, and I laughed_ , she thinks. She pushes the thought deep within her mind, where she hopes he will not ever find it.


	2. two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had hoped to update this story sooner, but these are difficult characters to write, and other ideas came along. But the fic is not dead! Feedback appreciated. :)

* * *

It all starts with blood; _she_ started with blood.  
  
She did not live until that night she died, when Gudren snuck that wicked, evil man into her room - the one with cold, dead eyes and a grin full of sharp teeth. She had chased after life, after the energy and the light and the sweetness, but her glimpses and her brief tastes were nothing more than longing gazes through a window.  
  
She did not live until she tasted Klaus' blood on her tongue and closed her eyes to frail, decaying mortality.

* * *

Her eyes sting from the brightness of the day; she stares straight at the sun, until her vision is nothing but whiteness.  
  
"Your eyes are still adjusting, Katherine. Do not exhaust them on your first day back in the sun." His fingers over her shoulder apply enough pressure that she winces; blinks. He is smirking in the corner of her returning vision.  
  
They walk like lovers down the streets of Atlanta. His arm draped over her shoulders while she readjusts to walking out of the shadows (walking amongst the living, breathing, bleeding, beating).  
  
It has been almost a month since the second time she was reborn with his blood on her tongue. A month, and no answers to her questions.  
  
He has left her with theories and conjecture and paranoia and desperate anguish because she knows; her Salvatores are gone, her Stefan is gone.  
  
First Elena stole them from her, and now Klaus.  
  
Klaus would steal them from Elena for her, of course. Steal them from Elena and steal them from her, because what she wants cannot belong to others nor can she ever have them again.  
  
And still she doesn't know why he bled life into her again, why he let her dance across the Earth thinking she had at last laid her master's ashes and dust to rest.  
  
She wants to know. She _needs_ to know.  
  
 _You stared at me - so_ surprised _. I danced around your body, and I_ laughed _. I laughed until I wept and fled, fearing it was an illusion - and it was! it was all along! - but you let me run lost into the night._  
  
"Don't do it, pretty thing. Do not ask again."  
  
She pouts. She hates when he is in her head.  
  
 _There is no where I can hide, not even in my own mind._  
  
"And what a twisted little mind it is." He smiles at her (moments - seconds - ago he was pulling away from her with a scowl on his face and contempt in his eyes) and tucks a strand of shoulder length hair behind her ear.  
  
 _I let it grow so long, so wild,_ she thinks, trying to hide the thought deep, deep down below the surface where he skims. _It was tangled full of dirt and leaves. You would have hated it._  
  
If she let it grow again, if she left it alone, would he brush it for her, beating the bristles against her scalp and tugging and tearing the tangles out? Would he hold her down and cut it when it grew too long for his tastes?  
  
"Any thoughts on lunch?" he casually queries. "I think today something warm-blooded would suffice."  
  
Katherine follows his gaze as it drifts to her right; she spots the runner in the park, the handsome youth in his twenties. She thinks he looks a little like her Damon; too short though, too stocky, but the resemblence is there.  
  
It strikes her that the resemblence is on purpose, and she giggles coquettishly; her maker is still sore with her. Her laughter bubbles up, louder and louder, as the thought solidifies in her mind and sinks in ( _he's green, still green, a lovely shade of jade green_ ) and she keeps laughing - until those nearby stare at her like she's crazy.  
  
 _I'm not crazy, I'm mad. Mad and dead and dead again._  
  
Klaus slips his arm around her shoulder again and squeezes; affectionate, supportive, tight until tears prick her still tender eyes. He presses his mouth to her ear. "Pretty thing, you were born dead; I gave you life, and life again." And then his presence is gone, his back ahead of her.  
  
 _"Go fetch our lunch,"_ comes the command inside her head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: And though this fic is not dead, it may be a while before it's updated again. My family recently suffered a loss, and this summer I will be internet connection-less as I spend the season with my grandmother. I fully intend to continue this story though, but it will probably be a while.


	3. three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major trigger warnings for mental, emotion, and physical abuse, as well as dub-con.

* * *

"I told you not to talk about them!" her maker roars; his distant demeanor and soft, absent-minded humming replaced with the manic, rabid beast she learned too late dwelled underneath his skin. He is lightning and energy now, with dark and timeless power filling the hollow of his insides.  
  
How can there be room inside him when his body fits the monster like a glove?  
  
Katherine thinks it is all in his eyes and his fingertips and the cavity in his chest where she is not certain a heart ever beat.  
  
He moves, and she flinches (she flinches more now, like during the earlier years when his fascination tapered into irritation because she had yet to learn how to let go). He pauses, and she waits.  
  
The crackling tension simmers and slowly dies.  
  
He laughs - in her head, he laughs, like this was some kind of practical joke.  
  
'Got you.'  
  
Katherine pouts and clenches her fists and smothers a tantrum. She shuts her eyes and cradles her own head; she still hears his laughter.  
  
 _Get out, get out, get out!_  
  
Fingers twist her hair (too short but long enough) into their clutches and yank her head back. A human would be dead, neck open maybe, but Katherine merely giggles and cries - and Klaus, Klaus looms.  
  
"Never presume to give me an order, Katherine. Remember who you owe your existence too, pretty thing. Remember who has given you life twice now - who you tried to steal the life from." He smiles then; friendly, humored. His free hand strokes her cheek. "You have long outgrown your tantrums, after all."  
  
It takes all her concentration, all the willpower that her madness can spare her, to not think that she would rather have died all those centuries ago (but then no Stefan, no Damon - no, better that she died with Elena and stayed dead). Wait, is she thinking those forbidden thoughts?  
  
He kisses her, fangs pricking her lips, and his tongue is in her mouth - and she knows that she must have succeeded so she focuses on his hands touching her gently like a lover, focuses on how it feels good to keep those other thoughts away. He pulls her too him, and he's attention and lusting.  
  
She remembers those good times they had, between the periods when she pined for her Salvatores and sparked his displeasure, and thinks that might as well enjoy what she can. It is easy to fall into the familiar rhythm - but there's an ache in the cavity in her chest where he ripped her heart out.  
  
(It could always be so good if he didn't frighten her so much or make her long for gentle and sweet boys that adored her; she could always enjoy it if he didn't make it hurt when she disappointed him.)  
  
They do not come together, but rather out of sync.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoping to wrap this up within eight chapters or less. Since this story doesn't have a definitive plot, it's a little harder to update it, but I intend to (eventually) finish it. Thanks to those who have left kudos!


	4. four

* * *

_Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results._  
  
Katherine tugs at her too short hair and giggles with vacant eyes; it hits her that this is an experiment in insanity. She is not as silly or simple as she used to be; seeing the world only to burn to ash because of a baby vampire in some small town nobody not born there has ever heard of has put things into perspective.  
  
Being brought back by the wicked man who made her a living dead thing has given her new insights on life.  
  
He refuses to tell her why.  
  
Why bring her back? Why keep her around? Why, why, why pretend she killed him? Why never hunt her down and make her pay? Why put up with her when she wanted the sweet smiles and adoring touches of Stefan and Damon and not Klaus' rough, bestial possession?  
  
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.

* * *

There was a time when Katherine thought that she loved her maker who saved her from draining rats and beggars dry. Her heart raw from the Salvatores' stubborn betrayal of her perfect dream; she was open and bleeding - vulnerable.  
  
And he found her, as if he had always been waiting for her to return to him. His blood ran through her veins - he told her once that it called to him. That she had become a part of him he could never shut out.  
  
Katherine had sighed with closed eyes and dreamy smile; his words were whispered in her ear while they lay tangled in tattered clothes and naked limbs. She had loved him then.  
  
Or had she loved the romantic notions he had dropped in her head?  
  
Had she only ever loved ideas?   
  
Love was sweet as blood in those days, but Klaus was an animal. Even when he was pleased with her there were claw marks in her skin and bruises on her bones. He held too tight, lusted too hard - too much, too rough, too everything.  
  
Klaus was ancient and the happier or angrier he was, the more unbridled he became.  
  
At first it was invigorating, but Katherine has always been a delicate creature.  
  
Soon she was thinking of her Salvatores, out there waiting for her - and soon he was trying to force those thoughts out. By pain, by manipulation; by voices in her head and carefully constructed nightmares in her sleep.  
  
Over and over he tried to make her stop. Over and over she tried to make him leave her be. Maybe her moment of clarity and ultimate insanity was when she thought she could kill him; Katherine broke the cycle (but Klaus, wicked and horrible and cruel Klaus, was only letting her think that).

* * *

It is Klaus who started the cycle over again.  
  
Katherine bites her lip until she tastes blood - his blood - and wonders if undead is all he made her (or does insanity run through their veins).


	5. five

* * *

Fingers in her hair.  
  
Fingers in her sex.  
  
Fangs in her neck.  
  
Nails in her flesh.  
  
There is blood on her lips - his, hers, traces left from their meal - and stars in her vision.  
  
Klaus is taking, taking, drawing her out - but it's good this time, it's so good. Like it was in the beginning of them.  
  
(Not of him, though, no, she cannot even fathom the beginning of him. He is infinity, endless and without origin; always was and is, she thinks; she does not know if she believes in God, but if any gods exist they are the only ones that know when and how Klaus began. Or maybe he's one of them.)  
  
 _I laughed and I danced around your body,_ she thinks in the back of her mind. Where she is certain he lurks, waiting for her to think something wrong, and against her neck he chuckles. She wants to grab his head and twist until it comes off.  
  
Like a soda pop top.  
  
He digs his teeth deeper. Fingers and nails follow suite, and then there is a thumb at her clit, stroking her over the edge.  
  
It's delirious and painful, but he always told her the best things are the worst things, the sweetest the most sinful; 'The height of pleasure always hurts a little.'  
  
Fingers at his throat.  
  
Fingers at his cock.  
  
Fangs against his lip.  
  
Nails against his spine.  
  
There is blood on her lips - and he brings wet fingers up to trace, and she licks because he wants her to, because she wants to.  
  
It would be so easy.  
  
But it wouldn't do a damn thing (except make her feel better for a short while).  
  
"Give me a little death, pretty thing," he tells her (his lips move, but she hears him in her heard, in the dark corners and twisted crevices where her thoughts run to hide).  
  
She straddles him and guides him in. It's so easy to pretend they are happy when he's inside her and holding her and smiling with those electric eyes. It's so easy she could cry. She rides him instead and drags her nails down his chest until there's blood rushing to the skin and marring the pale. She rides him and kisses him and bites until his blood drowns out the taste of her self.  
  
She rides him until they taste death again, and he was right; the height of pleasure always hurts a little.  
  
Katherine wants to ask him why.  
  
 _'Life's just too boring without you.'_  
  
It's the sweetest thing he's said to her in over a hundred years.


	6. six

* * *

Katherine can still feel the burning; the heat scorching her through. She was aware until her body dissolved and crumbled like burning paper; her bones ground to dust, and she sometimes collapses because she forgets she's solid again.  
  
He catches her.  
  
He taunts her and prods her and tugs and twists and pushes and pulls.  
  
Cool hands picking her up, keeping her standing; he catches her.  
  
When she closes her eyes, she pretends that his words are not barbs leaving invisible scratches. She can almost see affection in his eyes when she isn't looking at them. She gentles the sharp upward twist of his lips, softens the way his spidery fingers comb through her hair.  
  
He makes her feel solid again.  
  
Part of her wants to tear him apart for it.

* * *

"Tell me what you want to do tonight. We'll do it." He flashes a grin; there is a distinct lack of malice in those pale, blue irises.  
  
Katherine is on edge.  
  
Klaus laughs at her and strokes the nape of her neck. His mouth presses to her temple. _'Oh, pretty Katherine, you are so suspicious.'_ He walks into the kitchen; immediately she feels unstable, like part of her is missing. "I thought it would be good to indulge you tonight. We've been cooped up too long, only going out for strolls before feeding."  
  
She follows him into the kitchen and waits for some sign - some small, little clue that will tell her what's going on. Has she done something wrong? Has he found all those thoughts she stuffed and stored in the places where she was certain he wouldn't find them?  
  
It strikes her that she is always following him. Like magnets; he moves, she follows. He guides her and strings her along. She has not had a moment to herself in two months.  
  
 _No, no. That's not right. I had plenty of time to myself when I was dead. I just...wasn't aware of any of it._ Katherine feels a laugh and a cry clog up her throat; tight and hard to swallow. _Probably better though. I never do well alone._  
  
That's what Stefan and Damon were supposed to be for. They were supposed to be waiting for her, still pining, still wanting. Still loving. They had found her replacement though; her wretched, perfect, little replacement. With her confidence and her ease and her grace and her strength - strength Katherine didn't have until Klaus bled and beat it into her.  
  
"I'm waiting, Katherine."  
  
She's so lost in her thoughts that she starts at the hard edge of his voice, dragging her back into the present (dragging her back from her disappointment and her death).  
  
"I want to be alone."  
  
The words tumble out, unbidden and horrifying. Her hands fly to her mouth as though she can take them back, stuff them in, swallow them down. She's terrified, but she laughs. Laughs so hard tears burn her eyes almost instantly.  
  
"Would you rather I leave or you went out?"  
  
 _'I can give you what you want, Katherine. I can be kind. I was kind to you before you brought those boys between us.'_  
  
Eyes clench shut and hands move to her ears. She wants to claw him out. She doesn't hear him, not clearly; what his lips say and his mind whispers, none of it registers over the fear and the itch of him in there.  
  
 _'I danced around your body, and I laughed.'_  
  
"And I let you."  
  
"Why?!"  
  
It is silent in the room (in her head) for so long that Katherine thinks an hour or two might have passed. (When she looks outside, it's growing dark, and she's certain she's right.) It is silent as the grave.  
  
It's oppressive.  
  
 _'Because you were the only one who ever came that close.'_  
  
He is right next to her, crouched beside her where she's kneeling on the floor - when did she fall? when did she move at all? - and Katherine wants to try again. He's close enough for her to try killing him all over again.  
  
And she thinks maybe that's what he meant.  
  
She was only so close because he let her.  
  
 _I never wanted to hate you._ She tucks that thought away, deepest of all her secrets, and places her palms flat on his chest. "I want you to leave." She pushes.  
  
He goes.


	7. seven

* * *

Katherine is beginning to notice a pattern in her feeding habits.  
  
It's been two full moon cycles since she packed away the things Klaus gave her, set them on fire, and ran with nothing but her lapis lazuli and a bottle of red wine - the heady kind that's so strong it can barely be considered wine.  
  
(That was always the only kind Klaus drank.  
  
She finished the wine a week ago.)  
  
Paris was beautiful but full of shadows, and Florence was full of echoes. She couldn't stand being in Italy more than two days; Germany was off limits. She's in Romania now, in a quaint, little town outside of Bucharest.  
  
She likes the cliche feel of it all.  
  
This pattern that she's picking up on, though; it bothers her. It's too obvious and predictable; too easy to spot. She feels like a fool not noticing sooner, but then she hasn't always been the brightest.  
  
Klaus hadn't kept her around for her mind.  
  
There is a long trail of dead vampires and men left in her wake; three different types killed in an endlessly repeating cycle.   
  
First it's the green eyes. Curly hair - dark, preferably, but it's the eyes that really matter. Young, youthful face. Somewhere between boy and man. They fall so easily for her charms, for the aura of frailty she's never shaken. They taste so sweet, and she loses control so fast, and before she can realize it she's finished her meal.  
  
Second comes the black eyes. They're harder to find. She'll find someone with green eyes, drain them dry, and then she gets picky. That one, no, this one, won't do. It should have been obvious then, but she never noticed that it's black eyes that close the deal.  
  
And then it's the blue. The pale blue that makes her blood run cold. Those are always quick; she kills them first and drinks fast, before decay sets in. She knows they aren't a threat; not even the undead ones can fend her off now. She's strong again, and they aren't him.  
  
 _I thought I was strong when I went after my Salvatores._  
  
 _I thought I was strong when I drove the stake into Klaus' empty chest._  
  
Katherine wonders if he's caught on; if he's tracking her now. She should live. Go back to America. Or maybe Great Britain. Or she could go hide in the jungles of Asia or Africa or South America, or wherever the fuck she wants to hide.  
  
Makes no difference if he wants her back.  
  
Makes no difference.  
  
Her mind has been quiet - only her own voices piping up in there - but that doesn't mean it's felt empty again. It hasn't shaken the feeling of invasion, possession. She laughs at her pathetic, little pattern because it is pathetic; but it won't lead him to her.  
  
That link, that connection, that blood bond he fostered between them when he forced her to swallow him down while she lay in her deathbed is all he needs to track her down.  
  
She finds a pair of green eyes and a pair of black; one undead, one alive. She takes them back to her cute hotel suite, and she lets them play. She thinks about her Salvatore boys - those beautiful boys who couldn't love her enough to stop hating each other - and then she plays with them to her heart's content.  
  
And then she sucks every drop of blood from their bodies, and she buys herself a bottle of wine, and she heads for home.  
  
It's time she planted roots for a little while.


	8. eight

* * *

_'Did you think you were alone all this time?'_  
  
It's been years. Years since Katherine von Swartzschild came home; back to Germany, back to the town that used to be her village, to the crumbling remains of her family's estate. Years since reclaiming her property and building it back up to newfound glory.  
  
 _'I was there when you ripped the throat out of the man who would keep your home from you.'_  
  
She had waited for him. Laid awake countless nights, alone and strengthened on as much blood as she could consume without drawing unwanted attention. She had waited for him to come back for her, waited and wondered what she would do.  
  
"I was there with you, every night. I listened to your indecision; 'should I try to kill him again? maybe this time it will be different, maybe if I keep trying...that's insanity. I don't want to be insane' - oh, Katherine, madness is part of timelessness."  
  
Katherine wants to scream at him. Wants to demand why, why did he wait so long - why did he come back at all. Why won't he leave her alone; why did he leave her alone and let her go back to her boys only to find them not hers anymore?  
  
 _Why did you let me die?!_  
  
Klaus stiffens at that. His hands outstretched towards her but not yet reaching; frozen in the air, those long, slender fingers curved to cup her head. That cold, hard stare shifts, becomes something not softer or warmer, but...something less cruel. Something that Katherine cannot name.  
  
"After what you did to me, I did not think I needed to worry about you."  
  
She laughs. She laughs so hard she's crying - or is she crying so hard she's laughing? She can't breathe, but then does she have to? She can't remember.  
  
 _'I was there, in the back of your mind, where you thought you were safest.'_ His voice in her head is hypnotic now; soothing despite the insidiousness of his words. The horror of being exposed doesn't creep in. _'I was there every time you remembered killing me.'_  
  
She's only crying now, crumpled on the floor, motionless save for the shaking of her sobs. She folds up in his arms easily, and he cradles her to his chest, where blood collects in an empty cavern where his heart should be.  
  
 _You...you never punished me for those thoughts._  
  
"I told you once, perhaps more than that - I can be kind. You needed some place still your own." His lips brush the crown of her head with every word. "I am your sire, Katherine. Your are mine. I am there, in your head,because of my blood in your veins. I have never crept and pried into your thoughts, pretty thing; they have always been mine."  
  
Katherine is laughing again, and then she's whining, clawing at her traitorous head. She fights when he sets her on the bed, fights when he pulls her wrists away and pins them at her sides. She stares at him, unseeing and full of realization.  
  
Every moment of her second life was his.  
  
Every joy, every sorrow; every lust and hate and broken heart and briefly successful attempts at love.  
  
"Did you feel the pain when I died?"  
  
He leans down and presses a kiss to her temple. His thumbs stroke gently circles over the pulse in her wrists, calming her. "Yes, Katherine. In a way you killed me twice."  
  
 _How did you not see it the first time?_  
  
"I did. I wanted to see if you would go through with it. If you could."  
  
Katherine closes her eyes; smiles dreamily. "So I still surprised you." She remembers the way his eyes widened, the thrill it had given her; she remembers him falling at her feet, and how she had danced and laughed, and that moment is still hers.  
  
"You often surprise me." _'Perhaps that's why I keep you closest.'_  
  
"I hate you," she says. In the back of her mind, despite herself, she thinks, _but I don't want to._  
  
 _'I know.'_ His lips touch hers then, his tongue coaxes past, and his fingers are tearing away her clothes. _'But to be frank, my pretty Katherine, I cannot remember why I turned you, or when I first struck you. I remember Helen of Troy, and I see your face, but that is not what she looked like at all.'_  
  
Katherine is clawing at his clothes, at his skin when bared, and her legs wrap around his hips. She is weak, and this is all too familiar, too tempting even after everything. She wants to wrap her hands around his neck - and she does, because he knows she's thinking about it so why not? She chokes him and bites his tongue in her mouth and greedily sucks down the blood.  
  
He growls, fingers digging into her sides against her ribs. _'You will forget why you hate me one day. And I will forget you ever loved two Italians, because you will be struggling to remember their names.'_ He slides forward, and he's inside her, literally, physically now.  
  
She tightens her hands around his neck, digs her nails in until her fingertips feel wet. Her body arches to his; _I hate you. I will always hate you._  
  
"You probably will," he groans, his voice strained from the pressure around his throat. His mouth moves to her jaw, her ear, her jugular. "But you will falter sometimes, trying in vain to remember why."  
  
 _'And sometimes, I will falter in my fondness, struggling to remember why I keep you around.'_  
  
Katherine's hands loosen and slide down his back; she scratches her nails across his pale skin, drawing more blood. The scent is heady, and she licks at the trails of it over his pulse. She feels lightheaded, drunk; her body writhes against his on pure instinct, and she moans.  
  
 _Is that your excuse for all my bruises?_  
  
"No," he grunts. "I don't offer excuses. I am something brutal, Katherine. And so are you." His hips move faster, harder; he is never slow or gentle. This is always primal, something Stefan and Damon never quite reached with her.  
  
If she were a hundred years younger, she might feel guilty for how much she enjoys it, how close she already is. But her boys were boys, and Klaus is something more, something more than boy, than man, than human, than vampire.  
  
"I hate you," she gasps when she feels fingers between them, stroking where it feels the sweetest. _But sometimes I don't want to._  
  
 _'Maybe in five hundred years you'll feel differently.'_ He strokes her clit faster, his movements jerky, rough, unrefined and with a rhythm she thinks she will always have memorized. "Maybe...maybe we won't even remember each other then." And then he kisses her, thrusting in deep and hissing against her mouth as he stills.  
  
Katherine hooks her nails into his hips and bites at his lower lip, letting out a loud, whimpering sound while his fingers brought her to orgasm. She thinks that she can feel him in that blissful moment - his blood on her tongue and the hollow of his chest and the darkness of his mind, not his presence in her head but her inside his.  
  
She screams, and it's not fear or horror or despair. It's victory and satisfaction.  
  
 _Maybe in five hundred years, I'll haunt you instead._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I wasn't sure I would, but I have indeed finally finished this fic! Which along the way got something of a...maybe not a plot, but a point or purpose? It's been demented and fun playing with these two for a multi-chapter fic, and tossing canon out the window too. To everyone who left kudos, thank you so much!

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This fic idea came about from reading parts of Destiny Rising and ranting about it to two other Klaus/Katherine shippers. I've taken a few elements of that book and tied them loosely to Dark Reunion. This will not be a pretty fic. 
> 
> Malinna, this is your fault. ;)


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